140 THE CONDOR Vol. XV apply myself to the task as a whole, and produce a mass of measurements ages), to have brought to light a great quantity of important scientific history of them, and, finally, to have given illustrations in color of the eggs of all our Limicohe. The work would have occupied me for the better part of a year, and, as I have just reinarked, my time would not at present admit of such an under- taking. It has occurred to me, however, that an introduction to the study of the eggs of the birds of this group would be of no little value. The results of such an ex- amination are presented here, and all that I have been able to set forth is due to my study of the elegant collection of birds' eggs composing the cabinets of Mr. Edward J. Court of Washington, D.C., to whom I am very glad to acknowledge my indebtedness. Mr. Co.urt's collection is at his own home. He has allowed me to borrow from it, in preparing this paper, all the eggs of shore birds that I could possibly use, and I may say here that he has trays of them, filled almost to overflowing, the result of scientific collecting extending over many years. In this collection I find the eggs of Phalaropes; of the Avocet and Black~ necked Stilt; Woodcock, European and Wilson Snipe: the Dunlin and Black- tailed Godwit; Willets, the Ruff, Plovers, Sandpipers, the Long-billed Curlew (eighteen specimens), the Whimbrel, the Lapwing, three species of Oyster- catcher, and others. Examples of all these were taken to my home, where I made photographs of them (each specimen natural size); they are reproduced as the six figures illustrating this article. With respect to the position of the Limicolce in the system, based upon the morphok)gy of the known members of the group, it has been found that they rolm a Suborder, which in my Classification of Birds, I place between the Supersub- order CHARA1)RIIFORMES and the Supersuborder STEREORNITHIFORMES 1. As we know, the Limicolce, or "Shore Birds", are arranged between the Ralli and the Gallince in the classification adopted for the A. O. U. Check-List (x9IO), a relationship that is not supported by the anatomy of the birds in ques.- tion, whatever other factor may have been employed toward the adoption of such a scheme. And again, the Limicolce, in the A. O. U. Check-List, are divided into seven families, namely the Phalaropodidce, containing the phalaropes; the Recur- z'irostridce, or the avocets and stilts; the oCcolopacidce (snipes, sandpipers, etc.); the Charadriidce (plovers); the ,4phri,?idce (surf-birds and turnstones); the ?r-Icematopodidce (oyster-catchers), and the facanidce containing the jacanas. This assemblage, in the United States avifauna, is represented bv about sev- enty-seven species and subspecies combined, the great bulk of them belonging to the oCcolopacidce and the Charadriidce, or the great snipe-plover group. So numerous is this array that it would be quite out of the question to de- scribe and compare the eggs of all of them in this article. In many instances it is impossible to distinguish the eggs o a subspecies from a species, as most o61og- ists know. With this fact in mind--taken in connection with the rarity of the eggs of some of the species, rendering photographs of the latter the more de- sirable for publication--I selected the eggs which are here figured for my pur- pose. To represent the phalaropes, choice was made of the eggs of the Red and Wilson Phalaropes, and the illustrations of them are here given on fig. 4?, nos. ?-8. It will at once be observed that the eggs of the latter bird are considerably larger' 1. Shufeldt, R. W., An Arrangement of the Families and the Higher Groups of Birds. Amer. Hat. vol. xXXVlli, nos. 455-455, Nov.-Dec., 1904.
